


remember the spring turns snow to leaves

by mercuryhatter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Autistic Character, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nonverbal Character, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 07:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean works toward recovering after losing Kevin and Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember the spring turns snow to leaves

**Author's Note:**

> I want to reiterate the warning for a vividly described panic attack at the very beginning-- you'll miss it if you skip the first two paragraphs and none of the other events are nearly as vivid. And credit to the idea of Castiel giving Dean a copy of the celestial alphabet for nonverbal prayer goes to tumblr user redvioletsquares, thank you!

There’s a rushing sound filling Dean’s ears; he barely even hears the parting words of the angel in his stolen brother’s body. Dean can’t feel his body, has only the vaguest sense of the world around him, he can’t see Kevin at all anymore, his breath is coming so fast that he might as well not be breathing at all for all the oxygen he’s managing to take in. He thinks he might be on the ground. He thinks he might be five years old, or a hundred. He might be in Hell, or a house whose flames singe his hair. Or possibly this is some new dimension, grey and full of cold winds that rip his limbs apart at the seams, catch his thoughts and throw them too far to reach, tumble him like a shoe in a dryer while at the same time holding him paralyzed.

 

Dean loses consciousness.

 

When he resurfaces, the wind is gone and he can breathe with relative ease, although he can still feel iron bands preventing his lungs from expanding fully. He also feels incredibly _small_ , like when his awareness of his own body returned it returned shrunken and compacted. Slowly, Dean becomes aware of other things: he’s lying on a couch. He can hear a kettle going off in the kitchen, then fizzling out as it’s taken from the burner, which is odd because he didn’t even think they had a kettle. He sits up slowly, wrinkling his nose against the dull headache that intensifies with movement, and then immediately lays back down when he catches a glimpse of Kevin laid out, limbs arranged respectfully, on the huge table in the other room.

 

After a short interlude of dishes clinking and water running in the kitchen, Castiel appears in the living room, stumbling a little upon landing almost as if he’d forgotten to move his wings mid-flap, or whatever the metaphysical equivalent of that might be. He doesn’t spill the mug he’s holding, though, and with the same purposeful stride he uses to face down enemies or acquire hamburgers, he approaches Dean and sits on the coffee table, mug held out questioningly.

 

“I became rather fond of tea while living as a human. It’s very comforting, I find.” Dean shrugs and sits up, just holding the mug between his hands and occasionally breathing in the aromatic steam. Oddly enough, it does seem to help, at least loosening the constricting pressure on his chest by a fraction. He offers Cas what was meant to be a smile of thanks, a slight quirk upward of his lips, but Cas’s own expressions are so subtle that somehow he picks up on it. He inclines his head once in acknowledgement, then sits looking at his folded hands, silent.

Dean wants to ask him how the new Grace is sitting, has a vague urge towards making small talk to break the silence, but it doesn’t occur to him to open his mouth. Eventually, he nods towards Kevin’s body.

 

“I wasn’t sure if you would want to cremate him yourself,” Cas explains. Dean nods, and the brief interlude of peace, with the tea warm in his hands and Cas reassuringly close, implodes. Cas has to grab the mug from his hand with supernatural speed to prevent it from shattering on the ground as the weight of everything that’s just happened seems to almost physically crush Dean into the couch.

 

 _Kevin is dead, and it’s your fault. Sam is… god, who knows what happened to Sam, what did the angel mean, gone? No one is ever just_  gone…  _But Kevin is dead and Sam is gone and there’s no recourse, no way out, there’s no way you’re letting demons near Kevin’s soul by offering them a deal, there’s no way any demon could even find Sam, and if Dean is being honest he’s not sure he could consign himself back to Hell even if that was an option. You can’t put out another call to an angel, not after what happened the first time, you can’t do… anything at all. There are no options. You’re helpless. You’re five years old and you’ve lost the most important part of your life and there are_  no options…

 

Dean is suddenly very warm, there are arms that smell like Castiel around him, firm enough to hold him together, and the pressure calms him enough to pull himself back to the present. He presses his forehead into Cas’s shoulder, rocking back and forth to expend these overwhelming emotions in a physical way, and there’s a low one-note hum coming from his throat, but all these things calm him and soon he’s back on Earth. His first instinct is to  _shut up with that noise, Dean_ , but he reminds himself that that part of his life is over and Castiel probably doesn’t know enough about normal humans to know that this is  _being a freak, never going to look normal that way_ , but Dean doubts Cas would care anyway.

 

Cas loosens his hold enough to allow Dean to rock within the enclosure of his arms, the motion bumping his forehead into Cas’s shoulder gently with the rhythm of his movements.

“Tell me what I can do, Dean,” Cas asks, but Dean just shakes his head, he needs another minute or twenty, and Cas blessedly falls silent, doesn’t push. It’s a few more minutes before Dean lets out a long sigh and stills, although his hand lands on Cas’s knee and taps there in a slow heartbeat rhythm.

 

Somewhere in the last few minutes, Dean has realized that it’s happened again, his voice is not currently an option and he doesn’t know when it will be again. He wonders if he remembers enough from the ASL books that Sam brought home from the library, once he was old enough to, wonders if Cas understands ASL (probably), but after John had caught Sam and Dean signing he’d taken the books and told them to  _quit it, it wasn’t normal_ , so Dean had never learned much of it in the first place. Instead, he reaches for the small spiral pad he keeps in his pocket, partially for case notes and partially out of habit, and liberates a pen from the couch cushions. He struggles with what to write at first before simply scribbling  _hey, Cas_ , across a new page.

 

“Hello, Dean,” Cas says, and the familiar phrase grounds Dean, and he replays it in his head over and over while he writes his next message.

 

_Thanks for not taking Kevin. ~~I might need~~   ~~could you~~  we should burn him together_

 

His hand shakes badly at the end of the message, but it’s legible, because Cas nods.

 

“I will help you,” he says, and damn him for knowing exactly what Dean couldn’t quite ask for. “This Grace… it’s very odd to use. Reading minds and flying, things that should be simple, are very difficult. We will have to do it the human way.”

 

 _That’s best anyway_ , Dean writes, and Cas nods in agreement.  _Are you going to be okay with the Grace in you? Isn’t the angel you took it from bumping around in your head somewhere?_

 

“No, the angel is dead. I simply took their power as they were ceasing to exist. However, it’s not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m not sure how it’s going to affect me.” Dean frowns at that.

 

_Spit it out, Cas._

 

“No, Dean, I told you. We need my full range of powers—” Cas starts, but Dean shakes his head vehemently, almost ripping the paper with his vehemence.

 

_No Cas what if it’s like Leviathan_

 

“It won’t be,” Cas says firmly. “I’ve learned from that mistake, Dean, I promise. I would like nothing better than to put you at ease with this, but in this situation it’s impossible. I need to have as much power as possible. I’m sorry.”

 

_Don’t like it._

 

“I know,” and Cas looks legitimately sad as he says this, so Dean lets his hand rest firmly on Castiel’s knee instead of tapping and leans forward until their foreheads are touching lightly.

 

“It won’t be for too long,” Cas breathes. “I want to be human. But if we have this option…” Dean nods, as best as he can without jarring them apart, and he gets it, he does. He might even have some more peace of mind knowing that Cas can protect himself. He still doesn’t like it, but there’s not too much point to trying to make Castiel change his decision, and if pressed he would admit that he sees the point.

 

 _I’m sorry_ , he writes.  _Cas I’m so sorry your time being human shouldn’t have been like that I swear it can be so much better. I’m sorry I made it so bad._

 

Castiel shakes his head and tilts his head so that their faces are lined up from forehead to nose. It might have been awkward, but so many things with Cas might be awkward with anyone else, and Cas’s eyes were closed except when he looked down to read Dean’s words. They didn’t communicate for several minutes, until Cas turned to a clean page in Dean’s notepad and pressed his hand to the paper. There was a soft flash of white and when he removed his hand, the paper was inscribed with odd symbols that Dean thinks he might have seen in angel sigils. Each one has a corresponding English letter next to it. Cas folds it up and slips it into the pocket of Dean’s jeans.

 

“For you,” he says. “It allows you to pray to me without having to speak.” Dean thinks he might panic or a moment before Castiel continues with “however, I do not plan on leaving you any time soon.”

 

They don’t kiss that night, but they sleep curled under the same comforter on a mess of couch cushions pulled down onto the floor (rather, Dean sleeps while Castiel breathes deeply beside him. Dean is relieved to find that breathing has apparently become a habit; the rhythm is calming). They don’t kiss the next day; after cremating Kevin Dean locks himself in his room for the rest of the day and the following night. Cas is still there when he emerges, with coffee and toad-in-the-hole, which he sheepishly says is the extent of his human cooking skills. Dean doesn’t care. The third day, Dean makes an attempt towards beginning the search for Sam, but Cas finds him staring blankly at an empty Google search box, one hand hitting the table again and again and again, although when Cas suggests quietly that he might like to wait a while more, Dean flips over his chair and storms off.

 

He falls asleep in the Impala that night, surrounded by familiar smells and textures, and feels a little bit more alive the next day.

 

It’s not until two weeks later that they kiss, but when they do it feels like coming home.


End file.
